The provisional programme is also now available on the website, andabstracts of papers will be posted shortly.

Further conference information:

In the second half of the 20th century space has become a reference pointof cultural debates. Feminist critics have been particularly receptive tothe new findings in this field, and set out to explore the specificity ofthe relationship between gendered subjects and the spaces they inhabit.

This one-day conference will explore spatial perspectives on womenâ€™swriting from a range of disciplines, reflecting the scope of contemporaryfeminist interest in spatial configurations. The conference will addressthe issue of â€œhow British women writers represent spaceâ€, consideringquestions such as, how do women writers construct literary space? Whattypes of spaces/places are represented in works by women? How arereceived notions of space/place interpreted, accepted, or contested? Howdo we theorise the textual spaces in womenâ€™s writing?

Papers will discuss British womenâ€™s writing over a period ranging fromthe mid-19th century to the present. This choice conveys our intuitionthat the contemporary interest in space may be traced back to theVictorian age, when industrialization, and the rapid changes in landscapeand workplace it involved, considerably developed the writersâ€™ spatialawareness. Without losing sense of the specificity of the historicalperiods involved, this conference will therefore provide the site for aproductive comparative perspective.